shakesbrain.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

From learning about Patricia Highsmith's life, I'm tired just learning about her fascinating life. As you can see from my collection, I got carried away with my doubles. Inheriting a book collection from someone with great taste is great, even if you already own the books. :) #booksky

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Unfortunate that Ben Jonson's literary star doesn't shine any brighter. Acquired this scarce folio-sized scholarly large paper edition on handmade laid paper w/fine bindings a bit ago. Only 50 copies of this deluxe edition were published in 1875. #booksky #rarebooks

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Grolier Club's 1895 edition of the Poems of John Donne. Limited edition of 380 copies on handmade paper. You can never own too many John Donne books. My other copy is by LEC. #booksky #poetry

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

A letter I own from Elkin Mathews, the publisher, to Dodd, Mead & Co., regarding American publishing rights for a book that included unpublished writing by Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Notably, Elkin Mathews was the first publisher of James Joyce. He also published Oscar Wilde. #booksky

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

After looking up the bookplate, I learned this book once belonged to Edwin B. Holden, an early president of the Grolier Club and founding president of Club Bindery. Was about to break this book apart for the 50 etchings by Rembrandt through the photogravure process before learning this provenance.

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

Brutal! Ugh... x.com/charise_lee/...

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

I have loved Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree since boyhood. Pulled out my inscribed copies of two of his books and am now on a research crusade to find out more about the person to whom he inscribed the books. He clearly knew this person well. #booksky #photography #film

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

I need to figure out how to pick up three Frank Miller comics in one week. It took me years to find my copies. I also need to start collecting the trade editions of Miller so I can have more luck. Showing my limited signed editions of Frank Miller's Sin City. #comics #booksky

submitted 68 days ago • 1 comment

Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am very, very weak, but they are two different things.

submitted 73 days ago • 79 comments

Never thought of "The Siege of Thebes" as Chaucer fanfiction. Not sure if you were being tongue in cheek, but... Pulled out my 1602, 2nd Speght edition of Chaucer's Works, which helped establish him in the canon, and at the end of this important edition is the Lydgate poem! My photos. #booksky

submitted 81 days ago • 2 comments

A Forgotten Tudor Patron She was a Spencer, the wife of a Boleyn descendant, and a patron to Elizabethan greats like Edmund Spenser & John Dowland—yet history has overlooked Elizabeth Carey, Lady Hunsdon... bit.ly/4kggMrZ #TudorHistory #ElizabethCarey #WomenInHistory

submitted 108 days ago • 0 comments

Built in the 1420s, Ireland's Kilcolman Castle was refurbished by poet Edmund Spenser in the 1580s. An NEH grant-supported digital humanities project offers a VR model of the castle during Spenser’s time plus teaching modules with connections between the castle and his writings. ow.ly/xV3G50VielF

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

Even though Alexander Pope's The Dunciad eventually focused on Colley Cibber, his true critique was Lewis Theobald, who harshly critiqued Pope's Shakespeare edition. Theobald's retribution was harsh, as witnessed in his 1733 publication of Shakespeare's works. #booksky #❤️ 📚 #Shakespeare

submitted 86 days ago • 1 comment

Happy #GlobalRecyclingDay! 🧵 Throughout the day we'll be sharing examples of recycling in the Library and Archive collections to this thread, starting with a classic: a page from an old manuscript repurposed as a flyleaf. This one has musical notation and reparative stitching too! C14th, MS O.8.2

submitted 88 days ago • 4 comments

Whenever I pull out my limited signed edition of "Batman: The Sunday Classics - 1943-1946", everyone is surprised that Bob Kane agreed to let other artists sign the limitation page. #comics #Batman #Booksky

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

As a former Fulbright scholar, the time I spent in Greece and Italy was an invaluable part of my growth and development as a researcher, as a teacher, and as a Global Citizen. The scholars who are currently on program deserve better. #Fulbright #StandwithFulbright

submitted 93 days ago • 0 comments

And...Serious journalists must be serious thinkers. Anyone who has read "The Letters of Lincoln Steffens" knows that knowledge was not simply pouring in and out of his mind w/no thought. I love what he says about the literature of James Joyce. From my Carl Sandburg inscribed copy! #booksky

submitted 93 days ago • 0 comments

Had the golden opportunity to experience the Bishops' Bible of Queen Elizabeth I while doing research at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The elevator has the door of a secure bank vault. Turning the pages was a delight. NO GLOVES! #booksky #❤️booksky

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

History education matters

submitted 97 days ago • 2 comments

Was able to see the delightful show Fat Ham (a Black and modern retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet) last night @GoodmanTheatre w/Definition Theater. I'm glad I was able to make it to the "cookout" before the show closes today. So much fun! #theater #Shakespeare

submitted 96 days ago • 0 comments

Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography is also a work of art in detail. He is quite the raconteur. Cellini is a story teller cast in the same style as David Sedaris. Acquired the 1st English edition from 1771 to read and then listened on Audible. Showing my copy:

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

Being rejected by The New Yorker means not having to send the same letter John O'Hara sent them for not getting paid your worth. O'Hara didn't need to name-check Dorothy Parker. I was the only 14-year-old anyone knew who had his own subscription to The New Yorker. My parents worried about me!

submitted 107 days ago • 0 comments

Of the Metaphysical Poets, I wish George Herbert's name had as much cachet at John Donne. Students have at least heard of Donne, rarely Herbert. This is my copy of the 1641 6th edition of Herbert's The Temple. The inscription is from an anonymous hand. #booksky #poetry

submitted 108 days ago • 0 comments

Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring just to mock Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter (influenced by James Joyce) The cruel part is Anderson had seen Hemingway as his protege prior. Showing my copy of Dark Laughter w/ a kind inscription to his publisher Horace Liveright. ❤️ 📚 #booksky

submitted 110 days ago • 0 comments

As someone who was twice named an NEH Summer Scholar at Yale and later at The Folger Shakespeare Institute, I wrote letters asking that funding for NEH not be cut. I had no idea that the true cut would be to academic inquiry. My experiences were transformative for me as a teacher of young people.

submitted 112 days ago • 0 comments

We need more poetry indeed! But one could argue that poetry doesn't block out the noise of the world - it helps us to process this noise. Start my AP Lit class each year w/Robert Frost's essay "Education by Poetry," which makes a case for poetry. Education by poetry is education by metaphor.

submitted 112 days ago • 1 comment

Stephen Vincent Benet's poem "John Brown's Body" is one of the uniquely quotable poems for so many moments of injustice, freedom, and human rights. My two different copies. Showing my 1928 limited signed edition of Benet's poem. #booksky

submitted 112 days ago • 2 comments

"The American Dream:" A Course Syllabus open.substack.com/pub/joycecar...

submitted 113 days ago • 3 comments

Prosper Merimee's "Chronicle of the Times of Charles Ninth" is presented here in a special edition, featuring a handwritten letter by Merimee bound into the book. Merimee, a distinguished French writer, penned the novella "Carmen", later adapted into Bizet's famous opera. #booksky

submitted 114 days ago • 0 comments

Bizet's opera Carmen comes from Prosper Merimee's novella, but it's not mentioned enough that Merimee's Carmen was influenced by Pushkin's poem The Gypsies. It also is not mentioned enough that Pushkin's great-grandfather was a Black African. Pushkin: Father of Russian Literature. #booksky

submitted 114 days ago • 0 comments

I teach Alfred Tennyson's The Eagle to my grade twelve students each year as we delve into the difference between prose and poetry. I also do a book show and tell when I bring in my limited edition copy of Tennyson's works, signed by the publisher with a fine binding by Ramage. #booksky #poetrysky

submitted 116 days ago • 2 comments

I think Bernie Wrightson's illustration is my preferred one for representing Shelley's Frankenstein with fidelity. My illustrated limited signed edition of Wrightson's Frankenstein. 1994 edition limited to 26 copies with intro. by Stephen King and signed by Wrightson. #booksky #comicsky

submitted 117 days ago • 1 comment

Mourt's Relation is actually worth a read. In my defense, I acquired my rare copy for the binding and provenance. Owned by one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Henry Gurdon Marquand, with his gilt owner mark on the cover. Limited edition: 250 from 1865, initialed. #booksky #💙📚

submitted 120 days ago • 1 comment

Much gratitude to James Joyce patron John Quinn. Quinn purchased Joyce's early manuscript of Ulysses when Joyce was struggling financially. Quinn's money allowed Joyce to complete Ulysses! My copy of Thoreau's limited Ed, "Of Friendship" w/Quinn's bookplate by WB Yeats' brother, JB. #BOOKSKY

submitted 123 days ago • 0 comments

So odd to know that Edmund Spenser's Poetical Works debuted as a 1st American edition in 1839. My copy is in a special custom binding with hand tooling and mosaic covers. There are two title pages, one done in chromolithography to match the binding design. #booksky

submitted 128 days ago • 1 comment